Bad Banana

Why The Windows Have To Be Open When Writing Poetry Writing as Craft Amanda Wells July 18, 2025 Aaron John Curtis | The PEN Ten The restorative and revelatory journey in Old School Indian, the debut novel by Aaron John Curtis , explores the impact that culture, community, and history have on an individual. Two decades after leaving the reservation where he was raised, Abe Jacobs, now a part-time poet in Miami whose marriage is about to collapse, is diagnosed with a rare disease that doctors believe will kill him. Returning to the Rez, where he grew up, Abe agrees to undergo traditional healing by his Great Uncle Budge despite his skepticism, and finds a new path forward with writing, healing, his family, and his relationship. (Zando – Hillman Grad Books, 2025) In conversation with Digital Safety & Free Expression Program Coordinator Amanda Wells for this week’s PEN Ten, Curtis explains the importance of oral histor...

  Joy Harjo joined OU English professor Jake Skeets for a conversation about Native American writers and literature in Copeland Hall’s Native Nations Center on Tuesday. Harjo , an author, musician and member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, served three terms as the 23rd U.S. Poet Laureate , being the first Native American to hold the position. Harjo has received the Poetry Society of America's 2024 Frost Medal , Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry and a National Humanities Medal . Harjo has written 10 poetry books and released seven music albums. Last year, Harjo received the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication’s   Lumine Lifetime Achievement Award . ‘We have to gather’: Joy Harjo discusses Native poetry, importance of diversity, equity and inclusion READ: https://www.oudaily.com/news/poet-joy-harjo-native-poetry-literature-diversity-equity-inclusion-dei/article_c26a077b-0cd0-4f67-86f2-ff8d45cc5d46.html#1

H. Patricia Hynes 04/28/2025 Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – No one wrote more powerfully about humans’ poisoning the Earth and its consequences than biologist Rachel Carson–with a focus on one contaminant, the pesticide DDT.  She traced its toxicity through the food chain of nature and the loss of beneficial insects and birds, and then warned of the ultimate destruction of the natural world.  Other environmental writers of the time were perplexed by the tidal wave of impact Silent Spring had compared to their books: it was both the accuracy of her science and the powerful beauty of her science writing.  The award-winning Silent Spring was translated into all the languages of the industrial world, influenced key environmental legislation and spurred the creation of the US EPA.  It was a gift that kept on giving. That was 1962.  In every aspect of industrial life, we are on the precipice of a much greater loss of Na...

Doubleday wins three-way auction for Eliana Ramage’s ‘expansive coming-of-age’ debut Rights Apr 23, 2025 by Heloise Wood Eliana Ramage © Leah Margulies Doubleday has acquired To the Moon and Back , the debut novel by Eliana Ramage, in a three-way auction. Editorial director Bobby Mostyn-Owen acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein following a three-way bidding war, on behalf of Meredith Kaffel Simonoff at The Gernert Company. Doubleday will publish in hardback in February 2026. Margo Shickmanter at Avid Reader Press will publish in the US this autumn, as will Simon & Schuster Canada. The synopsis reads: “Steph Harper is on the run. When she was six, her mother ran – with Steph and her younger sister in tow – from an abusive husband into the arms of a small Cherokee community, where she hoped they might finally belong. But Steph soon sets her sights as far away as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing in...

At BAD BANANA Books: When we publish your book, we make two files: an ebook and a paperback; those files are uploaded into Amazon KDP.  Our authors set their price for each. We also get your book cover idea ready.    💁ADVICE A Practical Guide to Taking Your Book Global (Because Publishing Doesn't Stop at Your Borders) by Julie Trelstad | Bowker | Jan 7, 2025  Three decades in publishing have taught me this: international book distribution has transformed from a logistics nightmare into a digital opportunity. Today, we can reach readers from Australia to Zimbabwe through digital platforms, but the sheer number of options presents a new challenge. Let's break down exactly how to approach this strategically. Start with Digital The first step is getting your book into readers' hands – and increasingly, those hands are holding phones or e-readers. While physical books still hold their charm (my overflowing office shelves can attest to that), digital distrib...

  Today, the National Book Foundation announced the finalists for the 2024 National Book Awards in all five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. The finalists were selected from a starting total of 1,917 books submitted by publishers this year: 473 in Fiction, 671 in Nonfiction, 299 in Poetry, 141 in Translated Literature, and 333 in Young People’s Literature. The winners in all categories will be revealed at the National Book Awards Ceremony on November 20, during which Barbara Kingsolver and W. Paul Coates will also be awarded lifetime achievement awards. Winners receive $10,000, a bronze medal, and a statue; Finalists receive $1,000 and a bronze medal. Winners and Finalists in the Translated Literature category will split the prize evenly between author and translator.     An Oprah Daily "Best New Book" and "Riveting Nonfiction and Memoir You Need to Read" * A New York Times ...

THE LOST JOURNALS OF SACAJEWEA Open Audio Article Player June 05, 2024 LISTEN   “In my seventh winter, when my head only reached my Appe’s rib, a White Man came into camp. Bare trees scratched sky. Cold was endless. He moved through trees like strikes of sunlight. My Bia said he came with bad intentions, like a Water Baby’s cry.” Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting ...

  New poetry collection breaks free of limited Indigenous narratives At left the cover of the new book of poetry Teeth by Dallas Hunt (at right). Photo of Hunt by Conor McNally. Cover art by Michelle Sound and Dallas Hunt. By Odette Auger |  Windspeaker.com Dallas Hunt’s latest release is a book of poems exploring ideas of urban Indigeneity, decolonial theory and how First Nations find ways to create and continue to exist. Hunt, a member of Wapsewsipi (Swan River) First Nation, said his new collection Teeth sets out “to challenge the expectations and stereotypes placed on Indigenous writers.” Writing has always called to Hunt, he said, and he was encouraged by teachers and his family.  While his childhood had its tumultuous moments, his kôhkom (grandmother) and mom “really had a knack of finding a way when things were parti...

Above: The Berry Pickers: A Novel by Amanda Peters (Mi’kmaq Descent).  The novel begins in July 1962 when a Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer.  Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes.  She is last seen by her six-year-old brother, Joe, sitting on a favorite rock at the edge of a berry field.  Joe will remain distraught by his sister’s disappearance for years to come.  In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Her father is emotionally distant, her mother frustratingly overprotective.  As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her.  Unwilling to abandon her intuition, she will spend decades trying to uncover this family secret.    

BIG NDN PRESS An Indigenous Present A monumental gathering  showcasing diverse approaches to Indigenous concepts, forms and mediums. This landmark volume is a gathering of over 60 Native North American contemporary artists, musicians, filmmakers, choreographers, architects, writers, photographers, designers and more.  Conceived by Jeffrey Gibson, a renowned artist of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee descent, An Indigenous Present presents an increasingly visible and expanding field of Indigenous creative practice. It centers individual practices, while acknowledging shared histories, to create a visual experience that foregrounds diverse approaches to concept, form and medium as well as connection, influence, conversation and collaboration. An Indigenous Present foregrounds transculturalism over affiliation and contemporaneity over outmoded categories. Reviews This is a gorgeous coffee table book that offe...

   Courtesy Wisconsin Historical Society Press A new memoir called SURVIVAL FOOD shares tales from growing up on the Menominee Indian Reservation. The author, Thomas Weso, was born in 1953.  He passed away in July before the book was published. Thomas Weso grew up in a time of economic transformation – when commodity goods were eaten alongside game from Wisconsin’s Northwoods.  And then there was the rise of processed foods. He often wrote about food. Here he is speaking in a 2021 interview with Wisconsin Historical Society Press. “We should think about where food comes from. Because if we think where food comes from, we’ll take better care of the land around us.” Weso’s wife, the writer Denise Low, says he was interested in writing about Indigenous people in the present. “He had a very zen sense of like, “What’s here now?” and not “what were Indians like, or Indigenous people like, 100 years ago? Here we are now.” Thomas Pecore Weso (1953-2023) was an aut...

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S DAY TODAY "Unforgetting is the excavating of that truth and bringing it to the surface." Author Patty Krawec and her latest book Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future. (Broadleaf Books, Haley Bateman) CBC BOOKS: Originally published on November 10, 2022.  When faced with painful stories from the past, it can be easier and more convenient to turn away than to turn toward the whole truth. But author Patty Krawec says in order to heal and move forward, we'll first need to revisit and acknowledge what came before. Krawec's book, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future, pulls on threads from the past and the present to stitch together a way forward.  "We tend to think of now as this isolated time," Krawec, an Anishinaabe and Ukrainian writer from Lac Seul First Nation, told Tapestry . "Following those threads back to 'how are all of...